Customer Background

Abaci AS is an accounting office located in Norway with a turnover of approx. NOK 5 mill. (2009). Accounting Offices have a lot of responsibility. Not only the company’s own information, but all of its customers’ financial data and important documents needs to be stored safely. This is often information that is difficult to re-acquire if one is so unfortunate that something were to happen, either with the software or hardware.

Requirements

-In our industry, there is nothing as important as details, security and accuracy. One does not add a zero, or approach with an attitude that 90% is good enough. We are completely dependent on not losing vital information, and avoiding panic-stricken disaster recovery situations. In addition, there is a requirement for authorized accountant companies to have optimal backup functionality, and you must always store a backup out of reach of any potential disaster.
Ole Fegth – General Manager / certified public accountant, Abaci AS

Application Scenario

More and more companies have discovered how vital it can be with remote storage. An «offsite backup solution» saves all the information in a of-site location, and if something happens at the premises, i.e. a fire, water damage or intrusion, virtually no information will be lost – of course depending on how often you do backup.

Remote storage is offered today by various security companies, but this is expensive. Traditionally the solution consists of a tape streamer, a large tape library, and leasing remote storage space. In addition, there are transportation costs, and you must perform the backup yourself. This is something very few companies today have the opportunity, time and money to do more than once a week.

The Solution and Feedback

Simplified network diagram for Abaci AS

Abaci AS wanted a safe and cost efficient solution for remote backup. By adopting a Vigor 2950, a Vigor 2820 and two Synology network disks, they now do a complete backup of all data every night. The backups are automatically stored in 2 different locations. Locally Abaci uses the iSCSI feature of the DS107+ to enable Windows Server Backup to do local backup. Due to limited outbound bandwidth on their ADSL lines, they use rsync to perform backup over the Internet, to a remote location. The data traffic is secured with a Lan-to-Lan VPN tunnel between Vigor 2950 and Vigor 2820. The router automatically opens this VPN connection when the transfer starts.

This setup makes Abaci AS very well protected against potential crisis. With backup stored both locally and in an external location, vital information is safe, and the latest backup is always stored at the remote location.

«Without the DrayTek routers, it would have been to costly and time consuming for us to achieve the same level of security as we have today. We can now sleep safely at night, without being anxious of losing vital amounts of data if anything were to happen!”